You can look at the St Lawrence Seaway from a number of perspectives. You can see it as a spectacular feat of engineering, a brash and bold opening of world trade routes across the North American continent, or as an unmitigated ecological disaster. Jeff Alexander takes the last view in his book, Pandora’s Locks: The Opening of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway ($29.95, 416 pages, ISBN 978-0-87013-857-7, Michigan State University Press). Alexander pulls no punches in his book, and shows how the opening of waterways reeked havoc on the Great Lakes as invasive foreign species moved in along with the trading vessels from the high seas. Eric Reeves, a former Coast Guard Staff Officer for the Great Lakes ballast-monitoring program, says Alexander’s book, “tells the twisted story of this exotic disaster – and the story of our abject failure to prevent it.”
In a 2004 article in the Star Tribune, Few ships checked for invasive species, writer Tom Meersman spells it out, “These untested ships -- nearly 3,500 since 1995 -- are loaded with cargo, rather than ballast water. In theory, their nearly empty ballast tanks shouldn't be teeming with foreign creatures. But they are, scientists have discovered. Even ships with nearly empty ballast tanks can carry millions of tiny invaders in residual water and mud that can end up dumped into Great Lakes ports. Once established in the world's largest freshwater lake chain, an invader like the European round goby can become a permanent resident, out-eating, out-reproducing and overpowering native species. Two-thirds of the 79 non-native species discovered in the lakes since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959 almost certainly arrived in ballast tanks, according to recent U.S. and Canadian research analyzed by the Star Tribune.” http://www.greatlakesdirectory.org/ny/061604_great_lakes.htm
And so it seems that ocean freighters are laying waste to the Great Lakes ecosystems, and little was done has been done about it. Alexander is an award-winning writer, and author of a previous Michigan State book, The Muskegon: The Majesty and Tragedy of Michigan’s Rarest River. He blends science with first-hand accounts in a readable, journalistic style.
The St Lawrence Seaway may be bad news for the wondrous lakes on both sides of the United States-Canadian border, but the story of its construction is well-told by Calire Puccia Parham, a history instructor at Siena College in Loudonville, NY. The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project: An Oral History of the Greatest Construction Show on Earth ($34.95, 328 pages, 40 b/w illustrations, ISBN 978-0-8156-0913-1, Syracuse University Press) is a vivid tribute to the hard work and dedication of the project’s 22,000 workers. It was a phenomenal feat of engineering and manufacturing, and involved unprecedented cooperation between the governments of the United States and Canada.
The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project consisted of a series of locks, canals, and dams that tamed the ferocious St Lawrence River. Perham’s book draws on first-hand accounts of various engineers, laborers, and carpenters who built the Seaway in 1959. This book offers a human side to the massive international public works project. Perham is an expert on the history of the area, and she wrote a previous book on two towns that are separated by the St. Lawrence River: in Canada, Cornwall, Ontario, and in the United States, Massena, New York. The book is From Great Wilderness to Seaway Town (State University of New York Press) and offers various perspectives on the people inhabiting the area. Her new book is tells an important and almost forgotten story of how the St. Lawrence Seaway came to be built, and vividly recounts the experiences of the people who labored to make it a reality.
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